Trials of Mercy
by GreenWood Elf
Summary: Dr. Susan Holm was on duty in the psych ward when the cops brought in a man claiming to be St. Michael the Archangel. For some reason, she didn't believe him.
1. Chapter One Caged

**Author's Note: **Hello and welcome to my new Legion fic "Trials of Mercy". I'm so excited to have posted this story, which, admittedly, I started way back in November and more or less forgot. But now that I have a little free time, I'm finally letting the first chapter see the light of day. I do hope you enjoy it!

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion nor any of the characters affiliated with the movie. All OCs mentioned herein, however, do belong to me.

**Chapter One Caged**

It was about two o'clock in the morning when Doctor Susan Holm decided that she probably wasn't going to get any more work done that night. She was sitting in her office, no more than a glorified closet, off the fifth floor psychiatric ward at L.A. General. A stack of patient files sat on her desk in a neat pile off to her left, the folders varying in thickness, some dog-eared, others crisp and not yet marked with faint thumbprints or errant ink stains. Susan selected a file on the very top of the pile, the manila cover still clean, and rifled through the scant sheets of paper within. Female, aged nineteen. Diagnosed with anorexia nervosa and clinical depression. There was a social anxiety disorder also and maybe, just maybe, a touch of OCD. And now, she noted grimly, a suicide attempt.

Susan blinked, remembering how the girl had looked when they brought her into the E.R. that evening with slashed wrists, like a caged animal. Poor kid. She'd be spending Christmas in the psych ward. Did it get more depressing than that?

Definitely.

Susan flipped the folder closed and stuck her ballpoint back into the pocket of her lab coat. She'd finish this later. Give herself a half hour break. A little reprieve. She never really liked the nightshift, anyway. Why had she let Dr. Geller swap his on-call time with hers?

_Stupidity_, Susan told herself, a confined smile puncturing her annoyance. She liked to be self-deprecating. It kept her grounded.

Leaning back in her chair, which squeaked too much every time she moved around, Susan turbed on the small radio she kept in the corner next to her computer. It was little better than one of those hand-held sets her grandmother used to keep with her when she gardened in the backyard, but Susan only needed to get halfway decent reception on a handful of stations to be content. The problem was, nearly every DJ was playing Christmas music, and although she definitely wasn't opposed to the holiday, Susan found she really couldn't get into the spirit until Christmas Eve.

"You're a day early," she told the DJ as he introduced another set of traditional carols covered by nauseatingly cutesy pop stars. Even the classic rock station was playing Jethro Tull's Christmas album. She was truly screwed.

_I'm not a grinch, am I? _Susan asked herself. Aside from Ian Anderson's rather energetic flute playing, the office was quiet, the mood perfect for introspection. Somewhere down the hallway, a nurse rattled off a code call on the P.A.

Susan rubbed her hand over her eyes, getting stale mascara on her fingers. She was glad her days as a resident were over. There was nothing exciting about running off to a code. She wasn't sure how E.R. doctors stayed on their toes all the time. At thirty-three, she had learned how to feel old already. Maturity gave her some semblance of authority, she felt, and when dealing with the potentially unstable, delusional and paranoid day after day, having a little conviction behind her smile was more than necessary. Or something like that.

After forcing herself to listen to at least one Christmas song with holiday cheer in mind-it happened to Hark! The Herald Angels Sing-Susan gave into temptation and checked the time on her cell phone.

2:15 AM. Less than six hours to go. Susan squirmed when she realized that she didn't have a single text or voice mail. She supposed, that after waiting a week, Henry just wasn't going to call her. That was it. A very appropriate fuck-you to end what she had thought had been a good relationship. Granted, it had only lasted five months, but _he _had been the one who had invited her to spend New Year's with his family. That was supposed to mean something, right? Apparently not.

Susan jammed the phone back iton her pocket. She hated desperation, even in herself. And honestly, did she really think she was going to marry the guy? Thirty-six and still not out of law school. That was what someone like Dr. Phil might call a warning sign. But luckily, Susan herself was a _real_ psychiatrist and didn't buy into any of that phony TV shtick.

Maybe she'd have the last laugh and let Geller trade her his New Year's shift. That way, if Henry did call, she could give his fuck-you right back to him.

"Childish," Susan scolded herself, but it made her feel better. She picked up the next patient chart on the stack to relieve the small, niggling sense of shame she felt. Wouldn't it be nice if the hospital switched all their records into a computer system? Susan was tired of getting writer's cramp in her fingers every day. And the cuffs of her white coat always had ink smudges on them.

She clicked the top of her ballpoint pen. Where was she when she last left off? Oh right, Christmas in the psych ward.

The knock on the door was well-timed. Susan looked up, perhaps too eagerly. It was hard for her to appreciate the small comforts of solitude when she had such a crummy office, although she supposed that her paltry three years at the hospital didn't exactly entitle her to a downtown view.

To cover-up her anxiousness, she took her time closing the cover of the file and placed it directly on top of the others. Symmetry pleased her, because it was so akin to efficiency. She made sure that the pile of charts was straight before she bothered with a greeting.

Her visitor, however, was much more impatient.

"Hey, Sue." Eric, one of the male nurses on the psych ward, lingered in the doorway. Judging from the creases in his scrubs, she guessed he had already been on duty several hours. "I don't wanna be a pain in the ass, but I'm going need you."

"Sure." Susan gave him her best smile, only because she really liked Eric. He was a good guy, a dedicated nurse who had enough patience to make a saint jealous. She had been fortunate to see a lot of him lately. His fiancée was four months pregnant and Eric was snatching up all the over time he could, securing himself a nice little nest egg for his growing family. Last time she had talked to him, he was already picking out names for the baby. Eric was almost positive that he wanted to name his kid after one of the members of the Rolling Stones, his favorite band. Susan didn't have the heart to tell him that his fiancée would probably call him crazy and she herself would agree.

Eric leaned against the open door and ran his hand over his smooth, bald head. There were only certain guys that could pull off that look, Susan thought and he was one of the few. His skin, the color of coffee, had a real nice luster about it.

"What's up?" she asked, swinging around in her squeaking chair to give him her full attention.

Eric pulled down the rolled up sleeves of his undershirt. "Need you in the E.R.," he said. "Cops brought in a guy who is definitely going to need a full evaluation. Another fifty-one fifty, I'd say."

"He's violent?" Susan asked. Mindfully, she put her ballpoint in her pencil holder. No sharp objects, she reminded herself. It was amazing how clever desperate people could be.

"No, not now, exactly," Eric replied. He let her step out into the hall first before he followed her. "Cops caught him breaking into some toy factory-"

"A toy factory?"

"He had, get this, he literally had a duffle bag of guns with him."

"Hello, Santa," Susan laughed. They were by the elevators now and she pushed the down button with her knuckle.

"The cops aren't saying much," Eric explained, "but Miggs down in the E.R. thinks he was definitely tased a couple of times. The paramedics must've removed the probes."

"So far I'm only hearing the criminal," Susan said. She stepped into the waiting elevator and was glad to find it empty. She wasn't exactly claustrophobic, but still… "Why do they want him to have a psych evaluation?"

Eric looked at her, his face expressionless. "Guy says he's St. Michael the Archangel." He delivered all this in a dead-pan and Susan appreciated his professional indifference. The stigma attached to mental illness disturbed her and empathy, she felt, went a long way.

"Oh," she said, her stomach dropping a little as the elevator sped down to the E.R. on the ground floor. "All right, well, we'll see what we can do about that."

"Cops said he was going for a gun when they rolled up on him," Eric added. "He would've shot someone if they hadn't tased him, I guess."

"Is he combative now?"

"Sedated. Miggs gave him Haloperiel."

"Okay," she said. "I'll go from there."

The elevator doors dinged open, revealing the war zone that was the E.R. on any given night. A couple of E.M.T.s rushed a car crash victim by on a stretcher. Susan took a minute to check her cell phone one last time before she stepped into the chaos. Pulling it halfway out of her pocket, she saw that there were no messages, no calls.

_Well, a very Merry Christmas to you too, Henry._

Eric walked her down the open corridor to one of the isolation rooms. Susan was a little surprised when she noticed a small hitch in his gait. There was definitely something he wasn't telling her.

"What is it?" she asked, his reticence spurring on her curiosity.

Eric gave her a side-long glance, a worried frown digging into the corner of his mouth. "Guy has two _huge_ lacerations on his back. He said he cut off his wings."

Susan couldn't help it. She raised her eyebrows. "I can't believe I'm going to say this," she replied, "but that has to be a first for me."

Eric only shrugged.

There were three cops outside the patient's room, along with hospital security guards. None of them looked too pleased. Susan smiled at them as she passed. She didn't have a problem with the L.A.P.D., most of them were dedicated civil servants. But, as in all things, there were usually a few rotten apples.

Miggs, the attending physician, was inside the room with a few nurses when she entered. In the sharp, fluorescent lights, his face looked pasty.

"Dr. Holm," he said. "I appreciate the consult."

Susan only nodded. Miggs didn't interest her much. This patient, however, most certainly did. She let one of the nurses finish taking vital signs before she maneuvered her way past Miggs to get a better look at St. Michael, or whatever he was called.

The man was in a hospital gown, handcuffed on both sides to the bed railing, his head resting back on the pillow. A map of faint, black tattoos crawled up his neck and twisted over his bare arms. The I.V. was held to his wrist with several extra pieces of surgical tape. Susan wondered if he had tried to rip it out.

But the patient stirred then. Jerked his head off the pillow and looked at her directly, looked her right in the eye. A caged animal, Susan thought and was suddenly glad for her empathy.

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Oh boy," she said. "Oh boy."

* * *

**Author's Note: **Thanks so much for reading! If you have some free time, please leave me a quick review. Like all writers, I thrive on feedback. The next chapter has already been written and should be posted soon. Until then, take care and be well!

_*Please note, a "5150" which Eric references in this chapter is a term for the involuntary confinement of a mentally ill person by a qualified clinician under California state law. _


	2. Chapter Two The Gamble

**Author's Note: **Hello and welcome to chapter two of "Trials of Mercy". As always, I would like to briefly thank everyone who took the time to read and reviewed the first installment, **saichickAnnaErishkigal, Guest **and **Requiem for a Devil**. Your support and interest in this fic are deeply appreciated! I do hope you enjoy this chapter.

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion nor any of the characters associated with the film.

**Chapter Two The Gamble**

Miggs stood next to Susan, the bright light shining off his rather distinct bald spot. "Do you want a cop in here with you?" he asked, watching as one of the nurses fitted a blood pressure cuff around the patient's bicep.

Susan looked at her shoes. There was a scuff on her right toe. Messy. She'd have to stop at the drugstore on her way home and pick up some black polish. "We'll be fine," she said. "Eric told me you gave him haloperiel."

Miggs played with his tie, smacking it against his chest. "He was very combative…even handcuffed."

Susan folded her arms over her middle. She had never seen Miggs, a veteran of the graveyard shift in the E.R., act like this. He was the kind of doctor that came across as unflappable, someone who could wade through the unmitigated chaos of gunshot wounds, stabbings and OD's and still manage to throw around a joke or two with the scared young residents. Right now, however, he was bouncing on his toes, giving off an unsettled air that made the nurses jittery and left Susan curious. She wanted to ask him if he was all right, but that would probably be unprofessional. Instead, she studied her shoes, allowed herself to get annoyed at that ugly scuff. Black polish. Maybe she still had some left in her odds and ends draw at home.

"We're good here," the nurse said, rolling away the portable cart with the blood pressure monitor. "Watch the dressing on his back, though, in case he bleeds through."

"I got this," Susan said, hoping her assurance would be enough to restore calm. Sometimes, she didn't feel half as confident as she sounded. Not now, though. Now she felt just fine.

"What's his name?" she asked Miggs before he sidled out the door.

The doctor blinked at her from behind his rimless glasses. "John Doe for now," he said. "Guy didn't have any I.D. on him, but he says his name is Michael. His clothes are in a bag on the chair over there. I wouldn't bother looking, though. No wallet."

"That's all right, we'll get to know each other," Susan said. She offered Miggs a final nod, her expression casual, as if she were about to have lunch with an old friend. Although to be honest, these initial consultations reminded her somewhat of a blind date, the perfect storm of anxiety, excitement and curiosity all stirred into one potent mix. Without meaning to, she rocked forward on the balls of feet, her soles pressing against the floor with an obnoxious squeak.

The door clicked closed behind Miggs and she enjoyed the emptiness of the room. It was just them now, her and Michael…or John Doe. _Hmmm. _Susan chewed on the inside of her lower lip. She decided to go with Michael. It was much friendlier than John Doe and if he was comfortable with that name, she thought he should have it.

The patient was lying quiet on the bed, so still that she watched his chest for a few seconds to make sure that he was still breathing. He didn't rattle the handcuffs. He didn't curse or spit at her. But his appearance, well, she had to admit, it was a bit daunting. Something about all those tattoos and his eyes. He had such angry eyes, eyes that projected a sense of offense or affront, eyes that hinted at abused dignity. Of humiliation.

For an instant, she felt terribly, terribly sorry for him, as if she shared his shame, as if they were both being debased somehow by this encounter.

But that was a silly thought and entirely unwelcome in her otherwise analytical mind. After all, there would be time enough for sympathy later.

Susan kept her hands folded over her middle as she approached him, stopping about a foot away from the bed railing. The I.V. sent a steady drip of medicine into a vein in his left arm. They were probably giving him something for the pain. Eric had said that he'd torn up his back pretty bad, although the injury was supposedly self-inflicted.

Susan raised an eyebrow. She had never seen a mutilation of the shoulder blades before. But either way, it had to hurt.

She let the silence settle around them, establishing questionable ease, and, Susan hoped, trust. A small, if not bland smile lifted her lips.

"Hello, Michael. Your name's Michael, right?"

A stiff nod. Curt. Restrained. There was absolutely nothing hysterical about this patient, only a sort of meditative calm that seemed almost inhuman.

If it was possible for a human to be inhuman, which Susan knew was _entirely _plausible.

"Well hi, Michael," she said evenly. "I'm Dr. Holm. I work for the psych department here at L.A. General. If it's all right, I would like to talk to you a bit. Can you tell me what brought you in here tonight?"

Michael swallowed, the strange black script on his throat rising with the movement of his Adam's apple. Dressed in a white hospital gown, he was still surprisingly intimidating.

"You humans," Michael said, "are exceptionally cruel."

His voice shocked her a bit. It definitely wasn't what she was expecting. He had an accent of some kind, but she couldn't really place it. There was a practiced roughness to his speech…and a hint of elegance, refinement. Maybe he wasn't from L.A.? Susan was tempted to ask him, but she held off. All in good time.

"Are you talking about the police?" she asked. "The men who arrested you tonight?"

"Unfortunate," Michael said, "for them." He swallowed again. "I am going to ask you to release me now, although I know you won't. But I am going to ask, at least."

"I can't do that, I'm sorry," Susan said. "And if I did release you, it would be into police custody. Do you want to tell me why you were arrested?"

His mouth straightened into a hard line. Susan found herself marveling at his self-righteous fury. It was so direct, so focused, intriguing the clinician in her. What motivated this man? His mystery was enticing, and for the first time, she forgot to be sympathetic, disregarding his humanity in favor of academic interest. Psychiatry liked to label people and Susan loved the orderliness of the art. But the meaning behind this man eluded her. She felt as though Michael were observing _her_ from afar, gazing down from on high, passing judgment on something that was less definable than science.

Maybe that's why easygoing Miggs had been so jittery with this guy. There was something _off_ about him. Not wrong, just _off_.

"I was too slow," Michael said at length. He kept perfectly still when he spoke, ignoring the jumble of noises that filled the nighttime hospital. Outside the room, beyond their tiny haven, the foot traffic was heavy. Susan listened to the grinding of the wheels on a stretcher, the calculated beep of medical equipment. _What a chaotic world we live in_.

"You were too slow?" she repeated, allowing just a little of her confusion to show.

Michael seemed annoyed at her lack of understanding. "I would not have been arrested," Michael explained, "if I only had only been a bit faster. Quicker to the draw. I was armed. I could have killed them both."

His revelation unnerved her…slightly. Susan uncrossed her arms, her body craving motion. "That would have been murder," she said. "Why do you feel like you have to hurt people? Why did you hurt yourself?"

"Murder is a subjective term," he countered. She expected him to get agitated then, but he didn't. His heart monitor beeped steadily. His pulsed stayed at an even 88. "I said I wanted to kill them. When you are all dead in an hour, will that be murder too?"

He was trying to drag her into a debate, let her get bogged down in semantics. Nonetheless, Susan had to admire his command of language. There was a certain philosophical bent to his phrasing, a timeless quality that could be fascinating if observed in a research setting. But then she caught herself, remembering her place and her situation. She was starting to play Clarice Starling to his Hannibal Lecter. Not good.

"You said we're all going to be dead in an hour," she replied, searching his reaction for some hint of paranoia. But this guy was calm. Cool as a cucumber, her Grandma would say. Completely unruffled.

Susan moved a step closer to his bed, gave him what little trust she had in the hopes that he would repay it. "Why do you think that? Are you going to try to hurt more people?"

Michael's gaze never faltered. "No," he said, "but He will."

Was this a case of a Dissociative identity disorder? Voices inside his head? It almost seemed too textbook to her, too clichéd. Was he intentionally leading her to believe that he was unstable?

Susan turned her head to the side, broke eye contact for a moment. She had to remind herself that there were a bunch of policemen outside the room. But since when did she ever get nervous around a patient? Maybe Miggs wasn't too far off base with this one.

"Who is He?" she asked pointedly.

A hint of a smile now. His teeth were white and even. "God."

"And God talks to you?"

"He used to talk to you as well, Susan, but you've stopped listening."

Her face colored a little. Susan knew she hadn't told him her first name and it wasn't on her I.D. tag. Michael must have heard it from Miggs or one of the nurses. Her blush faded and she kept up her mild grin.

"Is religion very important to you?" she asked. Ah, they were really getting to the meat of it now, she felt. She almost wanted to ask him outright about the angel business Eric had mentioned, but that would definitely be jumping the gun a little. Patience. Patience in everything.

Because she was determined to help this man. He deserved it, as did every human being that passed into her care, as did all the patients whose files sat on her desk. Susan liked to think she was something along the lines of an incurable optimist, at least when it came to psychiatry. Her graduate school days had been fueled by her sustained conviction that no disorder, no errant fluctuation of brain waves or unbalanced chemistry or psychological trauma, could ever truly overcome a person. She had faith in that way. She felt that the core of humanity, whatever it was, the soul, the heart, would always exist unaltered in its truest state. She thought that hope was underrated and held onto it as the only thing of absolute permanency in the world, as the only-

"Hope," Michael said, scattering her thoughts with a single word. "In the midst of all this darkness, you still have hope."

She dropped her hands into her pockets, aware, suddenly, that her fingers were tingling. "Excuse me?" Susan asked, her voice a bit louder than she intended it to be.

His smile shrank, but the ageless echo in his eyes, the indefinable, the undiagnosable, remained. "You already know what I am," Michael said. "Will you help me?"

Susan was about to answer him, was about to offer him the same assurances that she had given to so many other patients. _Yes, that's why I'm here, I'm here to help. _She was about to tell him all that and truly mean it when the room went dark.

The lights in the room flickered, the back-up generators kicking in just in time to hold off what seemed to be a power outage. Susan looked around her, bewildered, as if she had been overcome by madness and then restored to sanity, plunged back into the icy cold water of reality. She blinked once, slowed her breathing and consciously plugged back into the world around her. Two orderlies were talking loudly in the hall. The P.A. system crackled with static as a code was called. Feet smacked against the linoleum floor. Michael's heart monitor beeped shrilly

Susan looked at him. He wasn't smiling anymore.

"It's too late," Michael said.

But Susan didn't believe that the world was going to end. She didn't believe him at all.

"Wanna bet?" she asked.

Michael's frown deepened. His heart rate, however, remained at 88.

* * *

**Author's Note: **The numerous references to Michael's heart rate were inspired by a brilliant section of prose in Thomas Harris's "Silence of the Lambs" describing Doctor Lector's almost inhuman calm while in a murderous frenzy. Michael, of course, isn't anything like Hannibal, but he does seem to possess an otherworldly levelheadedness. ;)

Thanks so much for reading! If you have a free minute, please leave me a review. As a writer, I thrive on feedback from my readers. Chapter three is in the works and should be posted soon. Until then, take care and be well!


	3. Chapter Three Judgment

**Author's Note: **Yes, it's a new chapter! Sorry for the delay. I've been extremely distracted lately by some challenging RL issues. Thanks so much for your patience! And thank you, **saichickAnnaErishkigal, Guest **and **Milk the Bob Man**, for taking the time to read and review! Your feedback, support and encouragement are heartily appreciated. I do hope you enjoy this installment.

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion nor any of the characters associated with the movie.

**Chapter Three Judgment **

A half an hour passed before Susan settled herself into the visitor's chair near Michael's bed. She would have preferred to remain standing, her spine solidly stacked, feet planted hip-distance apart, like when she stood in Mountain Pose during those few yoga classes she took a couple of years ago. There was something (oh, she hated to admit it! cautious feminist that she was) decidedly masculine about standing. Something stoic and erect and Susan was sure, if she delved into it deeper, she'd find a bit of phallic symbolism embedded in the notion. But sitting, her legs neatly crossed, her body wilted against the padded vinyl back of the chair, sitting seemed _womanly_. Gentle. Acquiescent. And Susan wasn't about to agree with Michael just yet. First, she had to prove that the world wasn't coming to an end…which should be easy, considering the current track-recorder of most Doomsday heralds.

Susan was almost disappointed when Michael began to doze an hour into their vigil. The Haloperiel had worn him down and even though he wasn't the talkative type, she missed his company. All shreds of her own exhaustion had been flushed from her veins with the first surge of adrenaline that invariably flooded her body and mind whenever she tackled a new patient. She was unprepared, however, for the faint twinge of sorrow that accompanied her observation of Michael. Perhaps it had something to do with his grudging, abused dignity. Or maybe it was the heavy, haunted sadness in his eyes.

Susan watched him closely as he slept. The room smelled of disinfectant. It was an inhuman scent and it caused a chill to dance along her narrow shoulders and down her arms.

What if, she wondered in the space of a single heartbeat, what if this guy was actually right?

But Michael was wrong. Of course he was wrong. Susan checked the time on her cell phone regularly and when it reached 4 AM, she roused Michael from his drug-hazed sleep.

He was awake the instant her fingers tapped his arm, his wrists tightening against the restraints and then relaxing, as if he was fighting his combative instincts.

"Sorry to wake you, Michael," Susan said in a light, slightly reproving tone. She had dropped her hand into her pocket and was rubbing her fingers together. Her subconscious had registered a mild tingle where she had touched him, although the ordered, logical portion of her brain couldn't process the sensation.

"It's getting near morning," she continued. "I'll let you go back to sleep in a minute, but first, I want us to talk about something you said to me earlier."

Michael stared at the white, lifeless sheet that bound his legs.

_The Shroud of Turin_, Susan thought, vaguely annoyed that she had made the connection.

The corners of his mouth dipped as he seemed to struggle against the sedation, clawing his way back up into a state of sublime, if not tortured consciousness. There was something pathetic about his vulnerability, Susan deduced. It made her throat tighten, her heart fluttering in the little well of flesh between her collarbones. Michael was truly a graceless creature, a being shorn of his own self, devastated in a way that the doctor in her could not comprehend, although she tried to.

"Was I sleeping?" her patient asked in that same stricken, grating voice.

His neck was bowed, shoulders hunched and Susan wondered if his back was hurting him. She glanced at his I.V., transfixed, for an instant, by the steady drip of clear fluid into the plastic tube.

"You were out for a while," she conceded.

A grimace. His eyes narrowed into slits. "And it is dawn now?"

"Just about."

"On the Eve of Christmas?"

Susan had to think for a moment, unused to his archaic speech patterns which made her own words seem clumsy. And it was not often, of course, not often at all that she felt cowed by a patient.

Humbled, maybe, but not humiliated.

"You probably don't remember the discussion we first had when I came to your room," Susan said. She crossed one knee over the other and leaned forward, her posture sympathetic, intimate, as she positioned herself close to the railing of Michael's bed. There were splotches of red on his wrists, where his skin had been chafed by the restraints.

Bruises, she thought absentmindedly, there would be bruises tomorrow.

"I wanted to go over-" she began, but then Michael laughed. It was a harsh, unpracticed sound, though self-deprecating.

"I am not a prophet," he said. "I am Saul on the road to Damascus. But who is really blind now?"

"I don't know," Susan replied before she could stop herself. This was not inane babble Michael was spouting, but a carefully crafted religious allegory. He was intelligent, at least. High-functioning.

And therefore dangerous…

"I'm not making much sense to you, am I?" he asked.

Susan's tongue pressed against the roof of her mouth. The tender pink skin was still sore, burned from her last cup of coffee she'd gulped down before her shift began. "Not exactly," she admitted. "But I'm going to try my absolute best to understand what you feel right now. It's my job-"

"Never get too close," he interrupted again. "Altruism is the same thing as martyrdom. I thought martyrdom would be glorious, even if I was martyred by God himself. Even if I was the one He chose to cast His stone at."

Susan blinked. There was a hint of strained filial devotion in her patient's voice. Reverence paired with rebellion. She was attracted to his anger, which seemed like a solid foundation on which his psychological turmoil could be laid, brick by damaged brick.

"Are you angry with God?" she asked him. "You sound as though you feel betrayed by someone you loved and should have loved you back."

Michael must have noticed her enthusiasm for the subject. His nostrils flared, as if he were mimicking her bloodhound's mind, her valiant attempts to catch a whiff of an elusive scent long gone dead.

"You like to play with words," he told her, "but words are too simple when you try to describe all the facets of love and betrayal. You misunderstand yourself searching for meaning."

"Michael," Susan broke-in, annoyed at his philosophical banter that even she was struggling to keep abreast of.

But the patient only shook his head. "If you have to know," he said, "I still love Him. And I did not betray Him. As His son, I only tried to give Him what I knew He would need, not what He would ask for."

"So God needed this?" Susan prodded. "He needed you to break into buildings and steal weapons and try to harm two police officers? Do you really think God would want you to hurt someone?"

Michael's expression was impassive when he replied, "He has."

A sigh worked its way up from her chest. Susan wiggled in her chair, her pride taken down a notch. The night had begun to wear her down and she suddenly remembered all the tiny little annoyances that nipped at her professional efficiency. She had a mound of paperwork to finish before her shift was over and Henry hadn't called and now she was saddled with another patient, another _difficult_ patient who was supposedly violent and had tried to shoot up a couple of cops, although he seemed as unruffled as a sunbathing cat right now.

Susan almost wished he would snap. Susan almost wished that he would loose his veneer of sanity in favor of hysterics or paranoid proselytizing. It would make her job much easier if he did. And it would mean less paperwork.

But then she shocked herself when she realized how truly dismissive she was being, how she had become jaded and wanted to pass this patient along to some quiet corner of the psych ward where he would be someone else's problem. But she wasn't quite sure she wanted to let him go yet. She wasn't certain, if the mystery, once solved, would only disappoint her.

Without thinking, she reached for the ballpoint she usually kept in her pocket to scribble down a few notes. But her pen was still back in her office, of course. There was nothing she could distract her hands with. Susan's palms itched. The air inside the room was dry on her skin.

"Do you have anyone I can call for you?" she asked Michael, remembering that he was a John Doe. "Your parents? Family? Friends or neighbors?"

For the first time, her patient looked frustrated. "No one will come for me," he replied.

"But if I could just let them know you're here-"

"There is no on who will come for me," Michael repeated firmly. "I am a…willing exile."

"No one is truly alone," Susan pointed out.

"You are," Michael said. "But you'll find it isn't so terrible."

She froze, hating his assumption, which was a bit too accurate for her liking. She could tell she was about to lose her composure and for an instant, she wanted to humiliate him, to remind him that he was handcuffed to the bed, wearing on a hospital gown and vulnerable and weak and entirely at her mercy. Because it was her decision now. Her professional opinion. And even what God thought didn't matter. He had left this man to her.

Susan stood, locking her knees and squaring her hips. "We have to work on dismantling your delusions, Michael," she told him. "After all, we're all still here, aren't we? No apocalypse tonight."

She thought Michael would become angry, but he stayed quiet. After a minute of thoughtful silence, he said, "I was wrong. I'll admit it now. The world hasn't come to an end, has it?"

"It hasn't," Susan said. She blinked in the glare of the overhead lights, which had a penetrating quality that somehow made her feel naked. She paused, and then added. "Are you disappointed?"

Michael smiled. "No," he said. "I'm relieved."

Susan's rubbed her fingers together. "We can talk more later," she said vaguely. As far as she was concerned, this evaluation was over. "I'm going to send in a nurse to check on your vitals. She'll give you something for the pain, too. And I'll ask her for another sedative…so you can sleep."

Michael didn't protest. He didn't strain against the handcuffs or curse or spit or promise to hurt her, as other patients did. But Susan was aware, she was oh so aware that she was fleeing from the room and from him, as if he had terrified her or challenged her authority or both.

She shut the door behind her and stood outside in the E.R., deaf and blind to the chaos and seething, stinking humanity around her. There was a cop guarding the patient's room. He was a big guy and his gut, which might have once been toned, now pushed against the buttons of his shirt. His collar had a single crease along the flap, something that only a hot iron would properly get rid of and like Susan, his shoes were scuffed.

Divorced, she thought, her mind clicking away. A bachelor trying to learn the ropes of single life again.

She took in the man's roughness, his blustery movements and the sheen of sweat on his forehead. But then she imagined him going home to an empty apartment and she knew then that she could control him. She knew then that she already had the upper hand.

"Did it go all right?" the cop asked her, hooking his thumbs over his belt like he was a Sheriff in one of those old westerns. "You gonna, uh, release him into police custody now?"

Susan lifted her chin. A few feet away from her, a man with a stab wound to the thigh was being whisked away into surgery. The P.A. system crackled overhead, paging a nurse to bed 15.

Susan saw that the cop was out of his element and that made her smile. "No," she said, enjoying his surprise. "I'm going to commit him."

* * *

**Author's Note: **Although I don't like to discuss my personal life, I'd like to ask for some prayers/good vibes for next week. On October 30th (if the hurricane doesn't upset all my plans) I'm scheduled for some major surgery to have a gastric pacemaker implanted that will (hopefully!) manage my gastroparesis, which is pretty severe. As a result, updates might be delayed as I recover, so I do apologize in advance for any delays. Thanks, guys! And thanks so much for reading! If you have some free time, please leave me a review. Feedback will certainly cheer me up when I'm in the hospital. ^_^

Until next time, take care and be well! And for those of you who celebrate, Happy Halloween!


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